That's the one marked "record" at the bottom. Two copies of the death of Siegfried would be an indulgence. I don't think I would be allowed paper, pens and tea making facilities, and since I can't write without a hot drink, I thought I might as well be in a good mood for whoever eventually rescues me. Do the people from foriegn have the faintest idea what we are talking about, I wonder?

2: "Desert Island Discs" and "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" are programmes on Radio 4.

3: "Desert Island Discs" is a talk show in which some celebrity is asked what he would take with him to a desert island. This week's guest is Yoko Ono.

4: The rules of "Desert Island Discs" are specifically "You may take eight records, one luxury (of no practical use whatsoever) and one book, on the assumption that the Bible and Shakespeare are already there; and you must also say which record you would save if the waves came and swept away the other seven.

5: A popular genre on Radio 4 is the "panel game" -- a kind of quiz or game show in which the quiz or game is merely a pretext for witty or clever celebs to have witty or clever conversations. "Just a Minute", "The News Quiz" and "Quote, Unquote" are three examples.

6: "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" styles itself "The antidote to panel games" -- the games are completely pointless, and although there is a said to be a scorer (a glamorous, scantily clad girl: this is on the radio, of course) there doesn't seem to be any scoring system.

7: The rules of panel games can be quite oblique and complicated.

8: "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" contains a round called "Mornington Crescent" of which the rules are so oblique and convoluted that only the players understand them, and they not well, and they change every week, in any case. "We're playing millennium rules, Cockfosters is wild.". However, it appears to involve constructing routes on the London Tube (subway) the winner being the first person to reach Mornington Crescent.

8: Mornington Crescent is the best place to get off for Camden Town, which is where Withnail and I lived. And, not uncoincidntally, it is opposite a nightclub which used to be the BBC Radio Theater.

9: It was, as you say, internally clear that I was making a list of records to take to a desert island, whether or not you were specifically familiar with Desert Island Discs.

10: However, Nick's reference to the "the waves taking the records away" was and in-joke which wasn't immediately clear to non Radio 4 listeners.

11: The words "Mill HIll" were thus to be interpreted as "Let us play a game of Mornington Crescent, a game whose whole raison d'etre is to be impenetrable to outsiders; but let's not say that that is what we are doing, so the whole thing is doubly impenetrable: an in-joke about an in-joke. In so-doing, we will ironically acknowledge that this thread has become insular and Anglocentric.

12: It would have been funnier if Nick had immediately responded "Leicester Square", which I think is a permissable move after Mill Hill in the standard rules, provided you are not in nip.